Former Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, a courtly figure and longtime military expert whose marriage to Elizabeth Taylor gave him a potent dash of star power, has died at 94.
Warner died Tuesday of heart failure at home in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife and daughter at his side, his longtime chief of staff, Susan A. Magill, said Wednesday.
A centrist Republican, Warner had an independent streak that sometimes angered more conservative GOP leaders. But he was hugely popular with Virginia voters.
That popularity was only amplified by his marriage to a mega movie star, which drew huge crowds when he was elected to the Senate in 1978. The “Doonesbury” comic strip lampooned him as “Sen. Elizabeth Taylor.”
Warner was the sixth of Taylor’s seven husbands. The two were married in 1976 and divorced in 1982. Taylor wrote later that they remained friends, but she “just couldn’t bear the intense loneliness” when he became engrossed in his Senate duties.
President Joe Biden, who served with Warner in the Senate, said Warner took “principled stances” guided by two things: “his conscience and our Constitution.”
“He neither wavered in his convictions nor was concerned with the consequences,” Biden said, noting Warner wasn’t afraid to buck his party on issues of “rational gun policy, women’s rights, and judicial nominees” and even crossed party lines to support Biden’s presidential candidacy in 2020.
